Randy Arozarena sat on 99 career home runs for nearly three weeks.
The wait for No. 101 was much shorter.
Arozarena went deep in back-to-back innings Monday night as the Seattle Mariners defeated the visiting Kansas City Royals 6-2 in the opener of a four-game series.
The teams will meet again Tuesday night in Seattle.
Arozarena hit a solo shot to right-center field in the fourth inning off Royals starter Michael Wacha to tie the score. He added a three-run blast to center in a four-run fifth to give the Mariners a 5-1 lead.
“No. 100 I was looking for for a long time,” Arozarena said through translator Manny Acta, the Mariners’ bench coach, in a postgame interview on ROOT Sports. “But my 101st was really quick.”
Arozarena batted .333 (14-of-42) on the Mariners’ 10-game trip that concluded Sunday to raise his average from .226 to .241.
“He’s really swung the bat well. He’s used the whole field, driving the ball the opposite way,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said of Arozarena. “Congrats to him, that’s a big milestone. …
“We’ve talked about this team and getting contributions up and down our lineup. (Monday) was Randy’s night.”
Cal Raleigh added his major league-leading 33rd homer of the season and a sacrifice fly for the Mariners, who have won six of their past nine games.
Arozarena said he hasn’t been surprised by Raleigh’s power surge.
“I expect that because Cal works extremely hard, I see it all the time,” Arozarena said. “And everyone knows he’s got a lot of strength, a lot of pop.”
Mariners starter George Kirby allowed one run on three hits over six innings.
Wacha allowed just one hit through the first 3 2/3 innings before Arozarena belted his first homer of the night.
“I mean (Wacha) had one rough inning,” Royals manager Matt Quatraro said. “(Arozarena) hit a home run on a cutter then a bunch of soft contact that found holes. … He tried to wiggle out of there, gets a sac fly from Raleigh and then you are hoping for a ground ball there but he made a pretty good pitch and Randy went up and got it.”
The Royals’ offensive struggles continued. They have lost eight of their past nine games, combining for just 11 runs in those defeats.
Bobby Witt Jr. drove in both of Kansas City’s runs, capping a two-out rally with an RBI single in the third inning and grounding into a forceout with the bases loaded in the eighth.
The Royals are set to send Michael Lorenzen (4-8, 4.91 ERA) to the mound Tuesday to face a fellow right-hander in the Mariners’ Emerson Hancock (3-4, 5.30).
Lorenzen, who has just one win in his past 10 starts, is coming off a 4-0 loss Thursday to visiting Tampa Bay in which he allowed four runs on eight hits — including a pair of homers — in 5 2/3 innings. Lorenzen is 2-2 with a 5.57 ERA in five career appearances against Seattle.
Hancock has lost his past two starts. He gave up two runs on three hits over five innings in a 10-1 defeat Thursday at Minnesota in a game that got out of hand after he departed. Hancock has made one previous start against the Royals and is 0-0 with a 9.00 ERA.
–Field Level Media
